Cybersecurity Awareness Month is half over — you secure yet?

By William Jackson

Oct 14, 2011

Another October has rolled around and with it another official Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Not that we need a special month to keep us aware of the need for better cybersecurity. Seems like every month in 2011 so far has had its top-of-mind moments reminding us that the bad guys are getting better at what they do, while IT users continue making the same mistakes.

The mantras so far this year: “Assume you already are compromised” and “people are the weak link.”

But are things all that bad? Maybe not. Dave Kennedy, a member of the Verizon Business RISK team, wrote in a recent Verizon Business security blog that dire predictions over the past two years about the death of the Internet have a way of not coming true.

“Lesson: The more alarming the headlines, and the louder the calls of alarm from pundits, the more skeptical we should be,” he wrote.

Of course, the bad guys don’t really want to take the Internet down, any more than Willie Sutton wanted to close down banks. (“That’s where the money is” was Sutton's explanation.) They just want to keep bleeding us. So keep aware this month — and the rest of the year as well.